Interview – Punamusta Liekki #19/joulukuu 2025
Author: Kalle Juntunen
Hiphop-artist Dagger D grew up in a family fighting for the liberation of their people. In a rare interview, he talked to Punamusta Liekki about music, oppression and the direction of humanity.
So you just finished recording, you were at the studio?
Yes I was, my brother. I was just recording a song called “Goh bokhor Khomeini”, which is Persian and means ’eat shit Khomeini’.
And by that you are referring to the Supreme Leader of Iran?
Absolutely, that motherfucker tortured my father.
Oh really?
Yes he did.
And this was back in the 80s or?
Oh yes, back in the 80s.
Can you tell about the background of your family, so where do your parents come from and how was their life?
I am a son of a Palestinian militant. My mother was an Afro-Palestinian militant, half Egyptian half Palestinian teacher and a translator. My father was a human rights activist and a political influencer. A fighter of the National Liberation Movement of Ahwaz, for his people. Like you know, the Iranian government is not very kind towards its minorities, and in particular Ahwazi Arabs who are considered Iraqis in their eyes. My father led the resistance movement against the Iranian regime and was a key factor in many things. He was supposed to meet up with the great Hassan Khanafani of the Palestinian liberation movement, but he was assassinated in 1972, so my father continued his mission with other Palestinian resistance fighters and a couple of other Palestinian resistance fighters. The Khomeini regime tortured also my cousins, aunties and uncles in one way or another. So the regime fucked my entire family up. Khomeini, and Saddam Hussein as well, made sure that I couldn’t grow up with a sane father.
Could you tell about the Ahwazi movement? What sort of activities were they conducting?
Pretty much psy opps (psychological operations) and espionage. They did infiltrations in bureaucracy, my father wrote four books about it. They haven’t been translated yet as I haven’t found a translator good enough to do this. I will need to brush up my Arabic a little further to do it myself in the proper way that it deserves. Now it’s safer to talk about these things, but I am still probably not allowed in Iran again or I probably won’t be able to get there to begin with.
That would be very interesting to read. When was it that your father and mother got engaged in this resistance movement?
Along the way there have been many countries and processes. My mother, a humble Palestinian teacher, along with my grandfather and grandmother were kicked out from their homes and they ended up in Kuneitara, a city in the Golan Heights region in southern Syria and it has the oldest Palestinian population outside of Palestine. You can basically consider Golan Heights Palestine as well, even though it’s part of Syria and all that.
And Golan Heights has been occupied by Israel?
Yes. Israel bombed Kuneitara and my mother ended up in Damascus where she met my father and I was born.
When were you born?
In 1994.
How was your early life growing up in the 1990s as a small child and how did your family end up in Finland?
We fled to Finland as political refugees as so many others.
I saw a lot of stuff already as a kid in Syria, many things that would traumatize an average child. You are part of your surroundings, there is a different kind of energy going on over there. Islam is the majority culture, and you have a community. It feels like even if you go down, you have people to fall back on. The energy is beautiful, it feels like home. That was something that I was denied for the next decades of my life growing up in Finland. Ever since I came here, I have never felt safe. I have never felt home. Have never felt, like you know, having a sense of belonging and community anywhere here, because I realized that I moved into a country that is consumed by individualism and hoarding culture. This is a country that I can’t afford to live anymore with Kela-benefits or whatever they want to call it. I did not want to come to a country to freeload off any system or whatever. I wanted to go to places like Spain, France, UK, US. To grind, and to make music, movies. Something. Be a creative. Finland is not a breeding ground for that kind of creatives. Here they end up getting lost, getting sidetracked. And when you are in this predicament, you don’t find nobody. Motherfuckers end up getting into drugs, or into a prison, or homeless. You fucking name it. That’s how I saw life growing up.
Also statistically, Finland is considered to be the most racist country in Europe. As when surveys have been conducted to immigrant-based population. So racism is at the very core of our society. For example, a good friend of mine got deported to Brazil last year due to MIGRI policies. Can you talk a little bit about what different forms of racism you encountered in Finland?
A total annihilation of a soul. I have come across religious racism, institutional racism. Racism is bound to the rules that western schools actually teach. It’s pretty Eurocentric in that. When you try to learn something about yourself and people are teaching you revised history. In general there is a cold atmosphere in Finland. It doesn’t allow you to speak, doesn’t allow you to thrive, and Palestinians in general are considered a threat. No matter what we do, we are fucked.
And even to have a ’foreign sounding name’ is being proven to be a very, very big obstacle in the labour market. So I guess that’s one factor of institutionalized racism and structural violence.
Bro I speak about four to five languages. I know how to get down and actually be a good, productive member of the workforce. The only work I’ve ever gotten here has been being a cleaner in Itis mall. And when my mother, may Allah rest her soul, had a restaurant open, I was managing it.
It’s really heavy. I was doing volunteer work for this Iranian man who used to have a dentistry clinic in Yemen. He was a member of a religious minority and had to flee with his family. He had a doctorate in dentistry and wasn’t able to work here due to not having a dentistry degree from Finland. He was struggling and after a few years in Finland, they moved to the Czech Republic. It seems that Finnish society and its authorities, institutions and so forth, do not recognise the talent that immigrants have. You have put very well into words how you have felt racism in the Finnish context, could you then tell me about your music. In the sense that how has the underground rap scene been for you, and how would you define the rap scene in Finland?
I define it as total crap. We are seeing the same names that have been out there for the last ten years. There’s no room for other artists, English rappers, there’s no professionality. Clicks are chosen and they want to keep their clicks in. Ain’t nobody that has a chance to go any further than the next man, ever get a chance to go there if he outdoes the talent and work. And that has been my case. There hasn’t been a show that I haven’t done with professional integrity and gotten a positive crowd reaction. All the time there has to be jealousy involved, forms of extortion and intimidation. For example, I have been pointed at with a shotgun. Also many other things that have endangered my life. Meanwhile I haven’t seen my money in over ten years with the labels that I’ve been working with in the past. The most important thing is not how I define the Finnish rap scene, it is how does the Finnish rap scene define Dagger D? How do they define me in this long line of music that I’ve been doing for a while? I need to find at least half as dedicated people as me to work with, my bar is so high for people even to get close to. Like this is the way we are going to work, every day mixing, mastering, whatever. We go out there do this shit, we ain’t thinking about money, the grind will sell itself. I don’t know, everybody wants to be P. Diddy status all of a sudden just because they sold 1500 beats.
Preach brother, preach.
That is the Finnish underground rap scene bro, take me to anywhere else, like Spain, France, UK. These spots honour hip hop. I love that there are dope ass underground hip hop listeners in here, but let’s be honest, the only avenue for artist like me is to do some Ege Zulu music. Big ups to Ege Zulu but that’s French drill and afro. I don’t want to dilute in a Finnish crowd to get through. I’ve grown up on my music, 90s west coast, mobb music and Houston slab and all that shit bro. Bone Thugs’N Harmony, Spice 1, C-Bo, Brotha Lynch Hung, Hollow Tip, X-Raided. You name it bro, there’s so many people that have influenced me growing up, and I owe every bit of my rhymes to these cats that most of these youngens don’t even know. They know Tupac Shakur, but they don’t know his riders like Spice 1. There are older people than me that don’t know Spice 1, I mean it’s embarrassing.
Word. About those influences, you mentioned Houston.
My music sounds like Bay Area, Northern California, Sacramento rap. I love the L.A. stuff too obviously. They mostly rap about Hennessy, weed, money and women. The bass in L.A. rap is where it all started, but they were rapping with simple flows, and what is technical is technical. It’s about fat drums and Chicano low riders. Mob music was different, as the beats had live instruments and the drums were grimy, guitars funky. You listen to Can You Feel Me from Spice 1, that is mob music. The way they did it, hit my soul. And that’s the thing, I would like to be compared to these guys but every time people tell me I sound like Eminem or Tupac. Motherfuckers, listen to something else that is not so popular.
Haha, perhaps they don’t have any other references. I don’t know, maybe people should do their homework. Rap is such a huge genre, there’s so much variety out there. So how about the stuff that you have now been working with, have you recently put out music and how is it looking in the near future?
Yeah. I’ve been releasing a good amount of music as a matter of fact. I just released five songs, and every two weeks I’m putting out a new one. This is part of my next upcoming project called A.O.A., which is short for Arch Angel of Allah, which is also the title for my upcoming books. I’ve written over 20 books, I’m sitting on seven thousand notes. And I’ll tell you about it some other time.
Nice, and on what platforms can people find your music?
Everywhere but not in Spotify. We are boycotting the war machine!
Word. And you are referring to the fucking Daniel Ek, the ceo of Spotify, investing in AI military company. To end this interview, I would want to talk about politics. I know you love politics, right?
On the contrary, I hate politics. Ever since I was a young man.
With politics, you don’t have a chance, they will do you, right?
Definitely.
So your loved ones and family have a history dealing with oppression and authoritarianism. How do you see the geopolitical situation right now with all the things going on? How do you frame it? Where is the world heading to?
To hell.
Could you elaborate a little bit.
Well these are the last days, if you take a look at the Quran and old prophecies, we are coming to the very end. Right now you know, Congo, Palestine, Sudan. So many other atrocities. Yes, people are waking up, but there is not that much that we can do. There is so much lethal happening right now. We have witnessed centuries of pain and trauma that can’t be put into words. So many families, so many broken systems. So many mistreatments and displacements, that it would take a long time to ever fix this mess. Even if someone would use a billion or whatever to feed the hungry. Humanity will find its way back into what it created, eventually. And it always takes a bunch of real ones to go against a system that likes to thrive on fuckery. Thrive on ignorance, thrive on being silent, thrive on selective outrage and thrive on to strain the fellow men. Thriving on destroying your women, your kids, people you take care of. There are people right now that have mansions and they are angry because the price of their latte is too much. I have tasted being hungry, I have tasted displacement. I have tried to kill myself six times and nobody came in, not even my own father. I have tasted when my former manager laced my weed and I ended up with brain and nerve damage. And mother killed herself about a year later. Ain’t nobody coming out here for me. So what is that in the end that is going to teach? By the time you get your ass to the top, and you got everything, everyone wants to be your friend. Everybody is going to treat you like you are somebody. Everybody is going to come at you and tell you how good you are. Everybody likes to show sympathy to money. If this is the world that we are living in right now, please unplugg me for fucking good. This is what I have to say about where we are going right now in the world brother, I’m sorry if I don’t sound too happy about it, I’m sorry if I don’t sound like there’s much hope in it. Until I see some change. Until I see myself living a life that is good.
Ain’t no fake positivity up in here. I respect hearing your thoughts. On the end note, I would still like to ask you a question: in the midst of all this neoliberal world that is growing towards fascism, and the market taking a stronger hold on humanity, where do you see the hope?
I see the hope in decalcified pineal gland.
What is that?
Well pineal gland is what every human being has. It’s the inner eye, the third eye. And usually when it opens up, your eyes get to see stuff that you would not normally see. People can activate it through meditation, through healing, through workout, through spiritual experiences. Everyone of us can activate it, if you just do the work.
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